This episode confronts the harsh reality that reducing Land Daily Diligence from twice weekly to once weekly in mid-September 2024 directly caused lead generation to plateau by breaking Meta’s algorithmic favor, while simultaneously the team backed off warm outreach and consistent marketing efforts that had built a strong pipeline throughout the year. The classic efficiency trap emerged where eliminating “non-essential” marketing to focus on existing deals dried up the funnel, revealing that current deal flow resulted from 6 to 18 months of prior marketing work, not current efficiency.
Key Takeaways:
- Never Stop Working Marketing Channels Backing off Land Daily Diligence from twice to once weekly saved time but killed Facebook group growth and engagement, demonstrating that algorithmic platforms punish inconsistency regardless of your efficiency goals.
- Current Leads Result from Past Marketing Efforts The strong Q2-Q3 deal pipeline came from 6 to 18 months of diligent outreach and content production, backing off marketing in Q4 won’t show immediate damage but devastates future quarters as the well runs dry.
- Speed to Lead Requires Consistent Touchpoints Twice weekly reviews ensure maximum two-day response times for property submissions, while once weekly stretches waits to several days, directly impacting conversion rates when investors can easily find alternative funding sources.
Listen to the full episode for complete analysis of how the efficiency trap kills growth, the algorithmic consequences of inconsistent content production, and the strategic marketing revival plan including conference appearances, podcast interviews, and systematic warm outreach.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, this is Chris Duff, land funding partner over at Serious Land Capital. So today I wanted to discuss the impact of consistent marketing. So we did a full analysis within our business and looking at the amount of funding leads that we were getting over the course of
the last 18 months or so. And we had a pretty sizable drop off over the last quarter of last year. know, sometimes it can be attributed to people get busy over the holidays and so forth. know, interestingly, we closed a large number of deals over that period of time. And, you know, they also happened to work quite well from a Dispo perspective.
Um, but you know, the total volume of leads was definitely dropping and. I really had to think much harder about, know, why, why is this, why is this happening here? You know, we were having such a large number of inbound leads for much of last year that, um, you know, while we still paid attention to.
outbound methods of marketing, a lot of warm outreach, primarily. It wasn’t as much of a priority for us. So we weren’t kind of keeping leads as warm as we had in the past or when we were first starting out, just because our pipeline of inbound was so strong and the volume of deals that we were doing.
was so significant that extra marketing efforts just got pushed back further and further from a prioritization standpoint. And ultimately what we really came to realize as we were examining, okay, what was this drop off caused by and really looking across all the various metrics from all of our various marketing efforts,
this really came into that classic mistake that Alex Ramosi routinely points out is that once you have a bit more mature business and you aim to become more efficient, that some of the elbow grease and groundwork that you had done from a diligent marketing perspective
is oftentimes the first thing to go when you just focus on, right, yeah, we’re a little bit more established. Let’s get rid of things that have less of a kind of clear cut relation, at least perceived relation to dollars into the business. When in reality, the pipeline of
acquisitions was so strong because of the prior, you know, six, 12, 18 months of work that we had done from a marketing perspective. And so we were, you know, sucking the well dry and just feeding off the pipeline of all the efforts that we had done earlier on in the business. And we’re like, okay, yeah, now we’re so established. can just rely on inbound here. Marketing isn’t as much of a priority.
And now all of a sudden we’re sitting on our hands to some degree during the day, one, okay, where are all these leads that we used to be getting? And, you know, I to come to the harsh realization that, hey, we need to get our act together more from a marketing side. So to give you some actual examples within our business, the land daily diligence group that I have on Facebook.
When we first started that was five days a week and that was just completely unsustainable. so switched to two days a week, within a month or two of initially starting that. And then ended up switching to just one day a week in mid September of last year. And then we were looking at the engagement and growth of our Facebook group.
after that change was made and it really plateaued dramatically. that was, know, when you have to play into the algorithms that, you know, the large social channels, you know, really define success on their platforms, we were no longer as much of a priority from Metta’s perspective. So,
You know, the growth of that channel just really diminished where we were getting a lot of potential funding leads. At the same time that affected our acquisitions and sales side of the business because, you know, speed to lead is always so important. It doesn’t matter what, what business you’re in. And when I was, you know, normally we’re always asking, Hey, do you want to have your property reviewed live? You can always get a little bit more information.
and detail when, when we are live recording what’s happening, during, during the diligence process and.
When we were just down to one time per week, got, you know, it really slows down the speed to lead because, know, if somebody submits on a late Thursday or a Friday or over the weekend, all of a sudden they’re having to wait several days just for a follow-up. Whereas when we were doing the twice a week, the Monday and Thursday, then ultimately you’re at most waiting two days for a…
review of the property. And so we can keep that speed lead up much higher. And for people who want offline reviews, yes, still it’s fine, but we can do that in between. No problem anyway. ultimately that was a, we were kind of killing tubers with one stone, by now just changing back to doing, you know, twice per week to bump our, marketing efforts up again. So
that was a big realization that we just had over this week, you know, very quick fix here. You know, it’s not going to be an overnight change to get all those leads back. But I did notice when I’ve got the Facebook, group reengaged starting to even share the podcast and so forth, it bumps with some of the algorithms. Now we’ve actually been getting several more, member requests for the group, just from that. So,
more confident that is going to work out for us again, longer term, just because, know, it had worked in the past and we were shooting ourselves on the foot by backing off from that. Some other avenues that were of note, you know, I haven’t been on as many podcasts recently or interviews, you know, here and there some, but not as much over the last six months. So that probably related to.
the diminishment of some of the leads that we were getting as well. So, you know, we’re going to be making much more marketing blitz, especially as the software launches shortly this year as well. So trying to line up more marketing opportunities on some of the more well-known channels as well. In addition to that,
You know, some of the conferences, you know, last big conference had been at was June of last year. So that can also impact, uh, as well. Um, but interestingly, there’s been less leads just available from an outbound perspective. So, you know, all the various discord and Facebook groups haven’t been as active from a lead perspective too. So.
You know, we’re thinking, and this is just feedback. mean, anybody who’s listening to this podcast, hey, if you have any direct feedback, yeah, acquisition has been slower. You’re not, or maybe you took a break for the holidays, what have you, mail or, you know, all your channels are still, you know, there’s still some lead time associated with it to get additional, new, new results in early this year. yeah, I know the weather is kind of terrible this week too, so you know, mail could be delayed.
further too. you know, there’s all those various factors that there just are potentially less funding leads available writ large for all funders, not just us. And, you know, just looking at the other funders out there too, I would put our marketing efforts above any of the others too, just in terms of, you know, effort and diligence. So I’m not perceiving
that we’re really losing out from that, other than shooting ourselves in the foot again, from just backing off what was working well from us prior. So those are definitely some avenues. Also, again, it was just doing less warm outreach. I’m gonna be doing a lot more of that as well here shortly, just checking in with folks. Again, kind of just keeping the relationships.
going and seeing where we might be able to work together. And at the same time, I hate being beholden to other people’s businesses to grow my own. we’re also going to be working more on sourcing our own deals, not just standard flips. I really only want to keep the funding side alive for that part of the business, but more for larger deals or development type, either subdivides or.
mobile homes or some other value add type deals. We’re actively researching internally to figure out where we might be able to source some of those as well and potentially partner with other companies too. just to give you some perspective on how we’re starting to approach things from
our side as well. And again, just getting more involved in other channels, you know, and be warming up our email list again. And, you know, this podcast should be helping as well get the word out about our business. But, you know, if you have one takeaway for this episode is, you know, if you find something that’s working with marketing, just never stop, never ever stop. you know,
It’s going to take us a while to spin everything back up, but we know we’ve done it before. We can do it again. And I’m never going to make that mistake again. So with that, we will conclude this episode here. Just recall, if you have any deals that are looking to be funded, Sirius Land.Capital, check out our LandPricer AI software at LandPricer.AI.
or the Lend Daily Diligence group on Facebook where I will review deals on Mondays and Thursdays, zero cost, whether you’re seeking funding or not. Please like and subscribe this episode if you think it serves it. Five star review, we’re trying to build this hair ace out. I promise I’ll get better at this over time, maybe 100 episodes in, I might actually start becoming good, 500 in, maybe even great at it.
That’s always the goal when learning a new skill. With that, take care everybody, bye.
